My name is Brooke Corder, and I am the social worker in the Center. Social work is something the Vascular Anomalies Center thinks is very important for the families to have access to and is a valuable part of the team.

[Who I talk to] depends on patient and family needs. Some patients are referred through the nurse practitioners, and some of the patients ask to speak with social work. If patients are traveling from far away or are having difficulty accessing care at Boston Children’s Hospital I try to offer support to those families.

What are some of the rewards and challenges of working with this population?
There aren’t a lot of patients who are in Massachusetts, and so having face to face contact with patients, either to do some more education or some more counseling, is limited outside of a clinic visit.

So some of the work that I would like to do in those realms is limited, and I think professionally, that’s one of the pieces that’s the hardest for me because there are programs or supports that I feel like could be done, that I would love to do, but there are those limitations.

I think one of the rewards is I personally like working with patients of all ages. Seeing children when they’re little, talking to them when they’re going to school, being able to talk to them when they’re going into high school and what that means, and then into making that transition to adulthood: all of those things I love to do, and with a wide range of ages, there’s lots of availability to do those things.